getting beyond the reach of state and ceremony, and that there would be now no more visits to make or receive, or receptions to undergo. Six or seven leagues, still over vast bare undulating plains, where the plough feebly contended with the waste, brought them to Horcajo de las Torres, a lone village, built on a windswept table land. The fourth day was marked by an improvement in the weather, which had hitherto been rainy, and by the arrival of a courier from court with a supply of potted anchovies and other favourite fish for the emperor. He also was presented with an offering of eels, trouts, and barbel, by the townspeople of Peñeranda, where he rested for the night in the mansion of the Bracamontes. The road now approached the southern hills and entered the straggling woods of evergreen oak which clothe the base, and become dense on the lower slopes, of the wild sierra of Bejar, the centre of that mountain chain which forms the backbone of the Peninsula, stretching from Moncayo in Aragon to the rock of Lisbon on the Atlantic.

In the fifth day's march the emperor began to feel the keenness of the mountain air; the little chafing-dish was constantly in his hand; and the previous night having been chilly, he sent forward a messenger to superintend the warming of his room at Alaraz, a village sweetly nestled in the valley of the Gamo. Here he wrote to the king on the morning of the ninth of November; and sleeping that night at Gallegos de Solmiron, he arrived on the tenth at Barco de Avila, a small walled town, finely placed in a rich vale, overhung by the lofty sierras of Bejar and Gredos, and watered by the fresh stream of the Tormes, dear to the angler and to the lyric muse of Castille. A second courier from court here overtook the party, with some eider-down cushions for the emperor, who was much pleased with their warmth and lightness, and said he would have them made into jackets and dressing

gowns for his own use. The eighth day's march, of six or seven mountain leagues, was the hardest they had yet encountered. The road, constantly ascending the rocky and wood-clad steeps, was extremely bad; and although the country people, whom they met, aided in overcoming the difficulties of the way, the cavalcade did not reach the halting place at Tornavacas until after dark. The emperor, however, bore the fatigue with all the spirit and somewhat of the strength of his younger days; he was even able, on his arrival, to go out to see the villagers fish the pools of the Xerte by torchlight; and he afterwards supped heartily on the fine trout taken in the course of this picturesque sport.

He was now within six or seven leagues of Xarandilla, the village in the neighbourhood of Yuste where he proposed to remain until his conventual abode was ready. His original intention had been to go thither by way of Plasencia, and thence along the Vera, or valley, in which the village stood. But from Tornavacas there led to Xarandilla a track across the mountains, by which a day's journey could be saved, and Plasencia, with its episcopal and municipal civilities, avoided. This shorter but far rougher road, the emperor determined to face. He set out on his last march in good time in the morning of the twelfth of November, his cavalcade being swelled by a great band of the last night's fishermen, and other peasants, who carried planks and poles, relieved the bearers of the chairs, led the mules, and pointed out the way. This assistance was not only useful but necessary, the road being as wild a mountain path as mule ever traversed. Overhung, for the most part, with the bare boughs of great oaks and chestnuts, the narrow and slippery track sometimes followed, sometimes crossed torrents swollen with the late rains, wound beneath toppling crags, climbed the edge of frightful precipices,

On this

and reached the culminating horror in the pass of Puertonuevo, a chasm rugged and steep as a broken staircase, which cleft the topmost crest of the sierra. airy height, the traveller, pausing to take breath, suddenly sees the fair Vera unrolled, in all its green length, at his feet. Girdled with its mountain wall this nineleague stretch of pasture and forest, broken here and there with village roofs and convent belfries, slopes gently to the west, where beautiful Plasencia, crowned with cathedral towers and throned on a terrace of rock, sits queenlike amongst vineyards and gardens and the silver windings of the Xerte.

The emperor was charmed with the aspect of his promised land. 'Is this indeed the Vera!' said he, gazing intently at the landscape at his feet. He then turned his eye to the north, into the forest-mantled gorge, between the beetling rocks of the Puertonuevo ; 'Now,' he said, looking back, as it were, through the gates of the world he was leaving, ''tis the last pass I shall ever go through.' Ya no pasarè otro puerto.1 During the ascent and descent, he was carried in a chair, the stout and vigilant Quixada marching at his side, pike in hand. They reached Xarandilla before sunset, and alighted at the castle of the count of Oropesa, the great feudal lord of the vicinity, and head of an ancient branch of the Toledos. Flemings were overcome with fatigue and with disgust at the obstacles which every step had put between themselves and home. But all agreed that the emperor bore the journey remarkably well, and did not appear greatly wearied at its close. He chose a bed-room different from that allotted to him by his host; and re

The

1 Puerto has in Spanish the double signification of 'gate' and 'mountain pass.'

quested that a fire-place might be immediately added to the chamber which he was afterwards to occupy.

Xarandilla was, and still is, the most considerable village in the Vera of Plasencia, a city so called by its founder on account of the beauty of its site, and its 'pleasantness to saints and men.' Walled to the north

by lofty sierras, and watered with abundant streams, its mild climate, rich soil, and perpetual verdure, led some patriotic scholars of Estremadura to identify this beautiful valley with the Elysium of Homer-'the green land without snow, or winter, or showers'-in spite of the 'soft-blowing sea-breeze' which refreshed the one, and the torrents of rain which sometimes deluged the other. With greater plausibility the Vera was conjectured to have been the scene where Sertorius fell by the traitor-hand of Perperna. Saintly history also deemed it hallowed, in the seventh century, by the last labours of St. Magnus of Ireland,3 and, in the eighth century, by the martyrdom of fourteen Andalusian bishops slain in one massacre by the Saracen. The fair valley was unquestionably famous throughout Spain for its wine, oil, chestnuts, and citrons, for its magnificent

In this itinerary, from Valladolid to Xarandilla, I am without means of computing the distances with any certainty:

Nov. 4, Tuesday, Valladolid to Valdestillas

5, Wednesday,

Leagues.

Medina del Campo...... 3

Horcajo de las Torres...

Peñaranda

Alaraz....

Barco de Avila

Tornavacas

3

4

4

Gallegos de Solmiron... 3

10, Monday,

11, Tuesday,

12, Wednesday..

2 Strada De Bello Belgico, lib. i.

Xarandilla

In all...... 36 to 38 leagues.

3 He was a prior of a convent at Garganta la Olla. J. de Tamayo Salazar: San Epitacio de Tui, 4to. Madrid: 1646, p. 42; and Sancti Hispani, 6 vols. fol. Lugd. 1657, v. p. 68. The fact, however, is dis

timber, for the deer, bears, wolves, and all other animals of the chase, which abounded in its woods, and for the delicate trout which peopled its mountain waters.

The reasons which guided Charles the Fifth in his choice of a retreat have never been satisfactorily explained. There is no direct evidence that he had even visited the Vera before he came there to die.' It is possible that the patriotism of some Estremaduran companion in arms, and his talk on the march or by the camp fire, may have obtained for his native province the honour of being the scene of the emperor's evening of life. While making the pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in April, 1525, or during the few days which he spent at Oropesa on his way to Seville, in February, 1526,3 it is not improbable that love of the chase may have tempted Charles to penetrate the surrounding forests, and that the sylvan valley may have

puted and the honour claimed for the Alps, and a place called Fucssen, supposed to be derived from Fauces, of which Garganta is also a translation. Theodore of St. Gall, who wrote the life of St. Magnus (printed by J. Messingham, Florilegium Sanct. Hiberniæ, 4to. Paris: 1624, p. 296), is entirely silent as to the claims of the Vera.

Robertson (Charles V., b. xii.) cites no authority for his account of the matter. 'From Valladolid,' says he, he [the emperor] continued his journey to Plasencia [a town which, as we have seen, he purposely avoided.] He had passed through this place a great many years before; and having been struck at that time with the delightful situation of the monastery of St. Justus, belonging to the order of St. Jerome, not many miles distant from the town, he had then observed to some of his attendants that this was a spot to which Diocletian might have retired with pleasure. The impression had remained so strong on his mind that he pitched upon it as the place of his own retreat.' M. Juste, L'Abdication, repeats the story, and assigns the incident to the date 1542, but like Robertson, gives no authority either for the story or the date. From the Itinerary of the emperor by Vandenesse, from 1519 to 1551, printed in Bradford's Correspondence, we learn (pp. 531-5) that in 1542 Charles was never nearer to Yuste than Valladolid.

Fr. Gabriel de Talavera: Historia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, 4to. Toledo, 1597. The letter of brotherhood, carta de hermandad, given to the emperor, printed at fol. 210, is dated 21 April, 1525.

3 Itinerary of the emperor, by Vandenesse, in Bradford's Correspondence, p. 490. He remained at Oropesa (erroneously written Aropesa) from the 25th to the end of February.